We all know that wearing green on St. Patrick day is sacred tradition for beer-lovers and festival-partakers but what about drinking green? Richmond has a huge selection of local craft beers, but you may not realize that many of them are brewed with an eco-footprint in mind.

Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, in addition to expertly attending to your taste buds, strives to brew with local ingredients. To do this they have collaborated with farmers, coffee roasters, chocolatiers, spice makers and other artisans in the region that showcase Virginias’ regional diversity.

Lickinghole Creek is another outstanding brewery working to make the craft brewing world a little greener. In addition to brewing beer, this 260 acre estate doubles as a farm that grows its own ingredients for their Estate Series Beer. This brewery is also water-conscious in their practices. All beers are brewed using well water drawn from below the water table on the estate. Lickinghole Creek goes even further in their green initiative by taking their wastewater and purifying it on-site and returning to the Lickinghole Creek watershed. Lickinghole Creek brews above and beyond!

Drinking any local beer is a great way to be green this weekend. Every Richmond local brew will actually have a smaller eco-footprint than outside beers because they expend larger amounts of gas and energy shipping them from the warehouses to the bars

This weekend, you can’t go wrong with drinking local. So, Drink Green and have a Great St. Patricks day!